Island silence
by crankedxburned
Summary: There was a girl among them since their arrival on the island and things were all holding together until around when Jack stole the glasses. Graphic, be warned. Ralph x OC
1. Chapter 1

The smell of a fire drifted into his nose and vaguely Ralph felt that curtain of fog dizzy him momentarily. He felt the distant hunger he had grown accustomed soon to rumble like thunder on the horizon nearby. He wondered about the littleuns as they are to be wondered about; their location, their safety, their doings. He wondered about the older ones, too, and where they were and what they were up to. He wondered about food that night and food tomorrow and the shelters and the definite swing from spring into summer; the days growing warmer yet and surely they had been there two seasons, now? And then he wondered about her.

It seemed strange to think about her as different, but she was. She was human like them and then there was the matter of everything else. There it was. He could pretend all he liked that she was separate but equal and she would never be. It would always be them and her.

He wondered at this and thought about this and then pushed it away. It was too much to think about with so much already on his mind.

"Let's not go complicating things any more than they already are," his mind said in much the same manner as his father or his teacher. "One musn't in this situation."

Just then he heard a cluster of littleuns further down the beach yelling, "Hooray!" into the dimming sundown light—most likely the hunters had brought meat. And Ralph only heard that collective cry as, _"Too late!"_

He came down to where they were all gathered around the pits and eating, gnawing, juice of the meat dribbling down the array of chins and mouths and fingers. Ralph stood uncertainly before them, not helping serve or taking meat, trying to shake the fog out of his mind. What was this? Forgetting the past? Or forgetting the future?

Jack ripped a sizeable slab from the pig and offered it to him. Ralph accepted but did not even begin eating as normal, instead only slightly noticing the weight of the steaming meat in his hands.

Instead he watched as Jack came around the pig again, easily hacking off a piece with motions he had grown accustomed to, and looked around the gathering. He looked about himself once more before saying to no one in particular, "Where is she?"

Samneric looked up. "Who she?" said the former and all listening gave him a flat stare. "Was a joke," Eric mumbled halfheartedly. "Only one she."

"There," Roger said, and pointed down the beach.

Heads turned and there she was, a shadowy figure coming towards them, walking to where the waves were just able to roll up the beach to lick her feet. Ralph went to do something with his hands—flick the irritating hair from his eyes, rub his neck, put his hand in the nonexistent pocket—and nearly dropped his meat. He deemed it best to eat then before he did anything else silly.

He took a bite and burned his tongue as she crossed beside him and she saw and smirked a little. Wondering if it was friendly or mocking he watched as Jack ceremoniously handed her the meat and said, "Alright?"

She smiled and the firelight illuminated all her teeth, the curve of her cheeks in a smile. "Alright," she said without further comment, and looked for a place to sit down.

Grouped in a messy circle around the fire, the littleuns took up one half entirely, chattering and talking and laughing at the sort of things boys of their age chattered and talked and laughed about. Around the other half, however, Piggy and Simon and Ralph and Samneric sat next to Maurice and Roger. Jack sat down, having done his job of dispensing the meat.

The older boys talked and pretended not to notice her deciding where to sit.

After some seconds of deliberation she sat where she stood, close to the fire, a solitary person within the ring.

Ralph watched her begin eating and then glanced at the boys beside him for no reason he could think of. Jack seemed to look over at him in that moment too, almost darkly curious. Ralph stiffened a little at the hardness in Jack's expression and then the moment was gone and the latter smiled at him and raised the meat in solidarity.

"Good, then?" He asked, and Ralph nodded.

They continued eating as always and as they sat around the fire afterwards, Ralph couldn't help but notice Jack's eyes trained on her back, silently watching like the eyes of the forest creatures at night. His silent vigil of her went undetected by everyone except Ralph.

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	2. Chapter 2

It was right around the time the glasses were stolen that it happened.

He had crept after her in the undergrowth, tailing silently except for the soft padding of his footfall. Through the undergrowth, ducking under the creepers, around stumps and then the twig cracked just like that.

There was time enough for her strangled gasp of horror and then she clearly saw his face painted and malign among the foliage. "Jack," she breathed in some plea at camaraderie. Then he started forward and she knew his intentions instantaneously in the determined set of his stride and the intensity of his stare.

She fled and he gave chase, reaching her easily as she never hunted or ran and, simply, he did. Not bothering to hurl a projectile he flung himself atop her and grounded her, falling heavily over her frame and instantaneously pressing her into the soil and leaves.

He was hot and sweaty against her and his war-paint smeared over her skin as he struggled with her, finally slapping her across the face twice and clenching a handful of her hair in his fist. She waited for him to speak or give some reason why but he only pressed himself against her and panted raggedly in her ear.

A few birds flittered out of the trees at the sudden sharp sounds of her cries. His own exultation was complete minutes later under the trees there in the strange sunlight of afternoon. She was unable to stand and so he left her there, strolling away deeper into the trees and idly wondering whether there was time to hunt for meat for that night.

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	3. Chapter 3

"Ralph," said his mother beside him, stroking a pony's nose from over the garden wall, "Ralph."

He shook his head and the old green world of rain he had left behind swirled away and he opened his eyes to darkness and the new green inferno he was trapped in, damned to eternity.

"Ralph," said Piggy from next to him, "Something's wrong."

The worry in his voice was different than a fire or littleuns; somehow different, even, than talk of the beast. There was some familiarity to the exact type of Piggy's grim and anxious tone now that drove Ralph to sit up and look at him.

"What's wrong?"

"Come on and see. Now."

They went down the beach together and through the foliage to the pools and she was curled in the water, white and bare and shining like a pearl in the clear moonlight. Water pooled under her and Piggy made a little whimper of unhelpfulness as Ralph walked only more quickly over to her there.

He stared down at her and a thousand different scenes played out in his mind all with the outcome of this.

"Jack," Piggy whispered, and Ralph no longer cared who.

"Any of them," he said. "They're all going to get it. He wouldn't not tell them about this. They all know. None of them came forward."

"But—"

He knelt and noticed her stomach was moving with breath and then realized he had only processed her body and the retribution it fell upon him to deliver. "She's alive," he said automatically and Piggy dithered about, wringing his hands.

Ralph turned her face towards them with the tips of his fingers and smoothed the curtain of long and tangled hair out of her face. He shook his head a little at the unfamiliar scent of femininity emanating from her skin and took in her face and the marks and the swelling and her eyes closed in sleep.

Dripping water all over himself he carried her back to his hut and would not entertain the notion of her being anywhere else.

He slept beside her that night and the smell of female overwhelmed him. He toyed with the question of if, should they all be rescued, he would be able to so easily smell as he did now. It was not that her scent was strong or overpowering, but that there was a smell at all and now he knew how to use his nose. Now he really knew what they were for.

Noses could smell a fire down the beach, they could smell a pig being roasted almost across the island if there was a breeze. And when there was a female around apparently they could tell that, too, without seeing.

But Ralph saw and saw all night, unable to keep himself from thinking and watching her as the dawn crept closer. And it was only when he got up once a few hours before dawn for water that he noticed the dried blood barely visible on the inside of her thighs, her legs shifted in sleep.

That instantaneous and enormous surge of violence welled up within him and would that he could run over there now screaming and smash every one of their heads in with the sharpest rock he could find and make them bleed for her blood.

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	4. Chapter 4

**Haeli E-my story follows the book. . .but let's assume there was a random girl with them on their flight.**

And then, just like that, he couldn't help but care.

He clearly recognized what this caring would entail. Now not only was he thinking of her—for he had thought of her before things fell apart, when things were civil, but not quite like _this_—but now he wondered about her, where she was, what she was doing, how she was doing.

He might have spent much of his time wondering ever after had she not found him sitting at the edge of the jungle on shore in the bright, clear morning light just hours after he had lain silently beside her said, "Thank you."

He looked at her and did not know what to say other than, "What did they do?"

"He," she corrected simply, and Ralph for some reason doubtlessly knew which he.

"What did he do?" he insisted after a moment of companionable silence, both staring out at the sea of morning.

She sat beside him without replying until answering, somehow looking at him and yet avoiding his eyes, "I think I'll stay around this side, if you don't mind. Just to avoid the other end."

Ralph nodded, seeing clearly how he was digging himself a hole, and looked at her. It was the right thing to do, was it not? Her fate on Jack's side and her fate on this side were two entirely different scenarios. Her freedom was assured her _here_—certainly not there—and yet—was it really assured anywhere?

She looked down at the sand. "Thank you."

"Don't."

She looked up questioningly and he added, "Don't thank me yet. If we leave."

The girl digested this before she repeated, "If." There was some dark, prophetic sense of doom to her word that gave him pause and when their eyes met again moments later she said, "Shall we pick fruit?"

He stood up walked beside her to the place where the fruit grew, solemnly pulling down ripe ones and picking up the fallen, bright, overripe ones from the floor.

A sudden blow on his back caused him to whip around, sinking into a defensive crouch when he saw it was only her, standing nearby and holding another projectile of fruit in her palm, smiling thinly.

"That wasn't funny," he chastised halfheartedly.

She kept smiling dryly. "If there's no fun at all it's going to be ever so hard on our own. We can't not laugh."

He saw the validity in this. "I know. Just. . .don't do it in the jungle."

She ran her hands over and over a piece of fruit. "I won't."

They gathered more together in the strange light filtering in through the wide leaves and foliage for a while. As usual now that Jack had left, there was no meat with dinner. But something filled it, almost, the hunger for something solid and fulfilling in Ralph's stomach. He just didn't want to think about what.

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